[Sci-tech-public] February 15: Talk by space historian Roger Launius on Robots and Humans in Spaceflight

[Scott Uebelhart]

Seminar on Space Policy and Society

Robots and Humans in Spaceflight: Technology, Evolution, and  Interplanetary
Travel

Roger D. Launius, Ph.D.
Division of Space History
National Air and Space Museum
Smithsonian Institution

Friday, February 15
2:00-3:00 pm
Room E51-095


Abstract: This presentation is based on a forthcoming book that explores the
history and possible futures for human/robotic spaceflight. While writing
Imagining Space: Achievements, Possibilities, Predictions, 1950-2050
(Chronicle Books, 2001), my co-author and I realized that the one area where
all spaceflight visionaries failed to make meaningful predictions was in the
rapidly advancing capabilities of robotics and electronics. For example,
when Arthur C. Clarke envisioned geosynchronous telecommunications
satellites in 1945 he believed that they would require humans working
onboard to change the vacuum tubes. In such a situation, it is easy to
conceive of the motivation that led people like Clarke and Wernher von Braun
to imagine the necessity to station large human crews in space. Some of the
most forward-thinking spaceflight advocates, in this instance, utterly
failed to anticipate the electronics/digital revolution then just beginning.
Humans, spaceflight visionaries always argued, were a critical element in
the exploration of the Solar System and ultimately beyond. Human destiny
required our movement beyond this planet, ultimately to the colonization of
the galaxy as a means of assuring the survival of the species. With the
rapid advance of electronics in the 1960s, however, some began to question
the role of humans in space exploration. It is much less expensive and risky
to send robot explorers than to go ourselves. This debate reached saliency
early on and became an important part of the space policy debate by the
latter twentieth century.

This presentation offers a history and analysis of how we came to the point
that we have in human spaceflight, as well as a discussion of the relative
merits of human versus robotic space exploration. In essence, I shall
suggest that the old paradigm for human exploration-ultimately becoming an
interstellar species-is outmoded and ready for replacement. I will
specifically look to the future of humans and robots in space and suggest
that the possibility exists that perhaps a post-human cyborg species may
realize a dramatic future in an extraterrestrial environment.


Biography: Roger D. Launius is senior curator in the Division of Space
History at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in
Washington, D.C. He has written or edited more than twenty books on
aerospace history, including Robots in Space: Technology, Evolution, and
Interplanetary Travel (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Societal
Impact of Spaceflight (NASA SP-2007-4801, 2007); Spaceflight and the Myth of
Presidential Leadership (University of Illinois Press, 1997); and NASA: A
History of the U.S. Civil Space Program (Krieger Publishing Co., 1994, rev.
ed. 2001). He served as a consultant to the Columbia Accident Investigation
Board in 2003 and presented the prestigious Harmon Memorial Lecture on the
history of national security space policy at the United States Air Force
Academy in 2006. He is frequently consulted by the electronic and print
media for his views on space issues, and has been a guest commentator on
National Public Radio and all the major television network news programs. 

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